Canal Street Halloween shooting suspect had been arrested 3 times on weapons charges

Law enforcement officers nabbed alleged Canal Street gunman Baltiman Malcolm with firearms three times before he got his hands on the Glock with an extended magazine that was used to fire 32 rounds, injuring three bystanders and killing Joshua Lewis while revelers were celebrating Halloween on Canal Street last week.

It doesn't appear that New Orleans police had dealt with him before his arrest on a murder charge on Nov. 1. But Malcolm, 24, had racked up quite a rap sheet in his young life, in other parts of the region and the state.

Malcolm graduated from John Ehret High School in Jefferson Parish, and in 2005 he moved to Lincoln Parish where he attended Grambling State University for two semesters. He left after he was arrested by the university's police department on a charge of intent to distribute marijuana in December 2005. The school has a zero-tolerance policy for guns and drugs, Freddie Peterson, chief of university police, said Monday.

Peterson said students who are asked to leave often try to return for Homecoming or Spring Fest. So his officers carry photos of those students and arrest them on trespassing charges when they come on campus, he said. Malcolm returned to the area in October 2006, possibly for Homecoming, and was arrested on the nearby Louisiana Tech University campus on charges of possessing drug paraphernalia and carrying a firearm with an obliterated serial number, Peterson said.

Two years later, in March 2008, Malcolm was arrested in that part of the state again, this time by Monroe Police Department officers, who pulled him over and arrested him on another stolen firearm charge, again for having a gun with an obliterated serial number, Peterson said.

After Malcolm didn't appear in court for that charge, he was picked up by Lincoln Parish sheriff's deputies on a warrant, perhaps during another Grambling Homecoming visit, in October 2009. The mug shot shows a dreadlocked young man; the property clerk logged in $3.41 in cash along with a check card, clothing, cigarettes, a cell phone, two condoms and some jewelry.

Just six days before he was arrested in Lincoln Parish, Jefferson Parish deputies had arrested him on a charge of illegal possession of a stolen firearm and battery of a police officer, Peterson said. He was again booked in Jefferson Parish in July 2010, this time on charges of criminal trespassing and simple criminal damage.

But on Friday, neighbors on his quiet Marrero street, which runs into Allen Ellender Middle School, said Malcolm was a well-mannered, cheerful young man who seemed to have fallen into bad habits in recent years.

Still, they say, while they may have looked askance at some of his visitors, they never felt threatened by Malcolm, whose mother is head of the neighborhood crime watch program, they said.

Some neighbors didn't want their names used because of the nature of Malcolm's charges. But Nona Duhon said she had nothing but good things to say about the young man who always walked over to hug her when he passed by on the sidewalk.

"He had gotten in a little trouble in the past," she said. "But I still can't believe Baltiman did that (the Canal Street shooting). I really am shocked."

Duhon last saw Malcolm at a neighborhood crime-watch meeting the night of the shooting but she didn't immediately recognize him, because he had shaved his dreadlocks, she said. "He told me that he'd cut all his hair and gotten a job. He said, 'Ms. Nona, I'm changing.'" Duhon told him she was glad to hear that.

The next morning, Duhon heard about his arrest and his alleged victims. So many children to mourn, she said.